[Brad] Welcome to West Baden Springs Hotel located in West Baden, Indiana
Inside this atrium they hosted the 2018 Jim Richmond opened and the FAI F1D World
Championships. We got to watch these amazing flying machines. Hi, I'm Brad of
Nighthawk Gliders and we were amazed by how high they fly, nearly a hundred feet
to the top of the dome. We also came here to interview this guy. His name is Josh
Finn. Josh is a bit of an expert in F1D. So sit back, enjoy the interview, and
let's learn something new about F1D.
[Brad] So we thought we would do a little sit down with Josh here.
Let me ask you the very first question that comes to my mind.
So, here's my question...
WHY?
Is that too broad? [Josh] No no actually that is a very common question and I'm gonna go
to Jim Richmond's answer which is look at it it's beautiful!
[Brad] I would have to absolutely agree to that because it's actually amazing to see it fly.
That's really the big attraction. The funny thing is that you think about
like something built out of balsa or tissue even or a special film you know
someone might not think about technology they might think old-school you know
it's it's kind of a crafty kind of thing. There's a lot of technology involved.
So, the thing that we see is historically model aviation has driven full scale aviation
and some of that was through sponsorship it was intentional it has known that model
aviation would drive aviation technology. Now it's taken its own right so much of
the technology we'll see here is going into unmanned aerial systems so it's no
longer these are the toys for the development it's more model aviation broadly is it!
Also the materials we use even balsa wood you think of that being old-timey material but
wind turbine cores are made with balsa. That's actually causing a balsa shortage.
And they like the same range of density of balsa we like.
like so that that's made a little interesting. Well pound-for-pound definitely
balsa is like the strongest material and yeah I absolutely love the material
and I've heard pretty much right after birth you built a paper airplane is that correct?
Yeah I was I was born I came out of the womb with a piece of paper in my hand.
when I was two my mom taught me to build paper airplanes. She immediately regretted it.
She regretted it? Because paper was everywhere I bet... right so she taught me to build one and paper having
within a week the house was full.
Papers is like the cheapest and easiest to get in I'm gonna call it free flight
right it is a glider. Well you know what the power-ups now you
can actually do a radio control paper airplanes. That's awesome uh you know I love that stuff.
So here we are right? This has been going on for
years and you know this has got a lot of history this building has a lot of history
and this is the second time that they hosted the Worlds, is that correct?
So as I understand it, I believe the first contests that were held here
were probably in the 50s or 60s. I believe it was post war... and then the 1980 World
Championship was held here Erv Rodemsky from the US won that.
And you've competed in just yesterday actually this is filmed the
the test day for the Worlds, but you competed yesterday in the Jim Richmond Open
and you had a really good flyer I was again the first time that we've been
to this thing so anything would impresses us but yours was
absolutely awesome and you used your balloon to help you keep it in bounds.
Yup, giant balloon. You had one stuck on the rafters. Three times.
Three times? Okay, but you got it down safely. Yeah no damage in the three times.
So I got mine stuck twice and Hope's got stuck once. But you but you're able to retrieve it.
Now we saw one that was dead on the ground so for whatever reason it's been stomped on.
Someone abandoned it. [Josh] We're all trying to figure that one out.
That was a sad moment I think got a picture of that we'll have to show that.
So how long do you think it takes to build one?
Depends on who you are and how much of a perfectionist you are...
So, like I'm not so I can get them done in like 20 hours. I mean I could probably
build them faster they wouldn't fly as well Speaking of airplane and building
you brought some some parts we can look at. Yeah, before we open this up I'll
go ahead and explain this is built to your airline carry-on restrictions. Okay
They've got to fit in the overhead bins. You don't want to take this as luggage or that's going to be destroyed.
The real issue is the propellers those are it. That's the heart of the plane. Absolutely!
So yeah, let's see this box. So, the way everybody
has their own way of doing this so bear in mind what you're seeing is one
example and this is kind of its I guess you'd say it's in an expression of one's
personality and this box serves multiple purposes so I have mounts for my winder
and for my torque meter a model stand I can fit into it some people actually
have fittings where they can set it up on the legs like a tripod. So what we'll
do is we'll slide it out of the way here and now we'll start taking things out so
this is a very disorganized and... Now everything is very tightly packed in this box.
Mine is exceptionally so and I use these balsa spacers
for everything and unfortunately they have warped out of place in a few places and
up here were a slide out our collection of propellers and tail booms
and try not to take everything else out with it. So what we have here is two sets
of of everything and the reason for that is that I am not the only person in my
family that flies. My wife flies as well. We'll bring her in a minute, but
there are two F1D's in here for her several propellers because we have fixed
pitch and variable pitch for her and parts for models from
several over the classes By the way the the fellow who just passed through
the background is Yuan Kang Lee. He is the defending world champion. [Brad] Hey!
Back into this, I'll show you part of Hope's models. So this is your motor stick.
So you've got two carbon posts that come up and our wings mount onto that whole
I'll pull out her wing.
I don't want touch this stuff
So these are like little tubes... Right, so, these are tissue tubes we roll them on a
basically a piece of steel wire you wipe it with some wax or something so it
wont stick. I use white glue to bond it so everything just friction fits onto
these posts and you can so now I've got it on there and I can actually I can
slide it down to give myself positive incidence slide it back up just set
myself to zero you don't want negative incidence. [Brad] And you're just sliding these
just a fraction of an inch, not a whole lot. So what is the covering on this?
This is a polyester film it's made by DuPont and is called OS film they call it OS film
because it from one sided as in their measurements they can't detect the
other side and that's where we get if you notice as you move this around it
looks like it's different colors. This film is colorless. It interferes
with wavelength light just like a soap bubble
and as a result you end up with this thing that you can actually tell the
thickness of the film based on which colors it refracts. But this is
roughly 0.5 micron that's a good balance between ridiculously fragile and light.
So what makes an F1D there's certain dimensions right?
Yes. The first thing that we have to establish is it's free flight so no radio
control is allowed. There are whole classes of free flight. This is a
subclass of indoor flying there's also outdoor flying and of
course there's rubber power, there's electric, there's rocket power,
there's catapult, there's hand launch, towline, and the list goes on...
But, for an F1D we're within the free flight class were within the fact that it's indoor flying
and now we get on down to the brass tacks of a maximum between our
wingtips after the dihedral is added our maximum with 55 centimetres. Maximum wing chord
at the widest point of 200 millimeters. By the way that's Nick Ray that just passed...
This is Joseph Szczur down here. [Joseph] Is this a live stream or something?
[Josh] No, we're recording a video.
[Joseph] Oh, cool.
[Josh] So, say "hi" to the video! Joseph is famous. He's like a sponsored pilot for Verizon and stuff...
No, I'm just sponsored by daddy's wallet.
[All laugh!]
Plus a little bit of Amazon Prime.
He's actually on the junior team this will be his last year he's actually doing it for
the second time. [Brad] Nice! Okay so we covered 55 centimetres 200 centimeters or yeah, right...
20 centimeters maximum for your
stabilizer in the back... maximum span 450 milliliters (45 centimeters)
and it's subject to the same chord restriction. And then a minimum
weight of 1.4 grams. A minimum weight of 1.4 grams? Cause weight hurts you in performance.
Then you have a maximum of 0.4 grams of rubber you can put on this I mean
that's tiny to give you an idea I mean we're talking about an airplane that's
almost three feet long and we're powering it with this! This is all we're allowed. And this is very thin, what is this about like...
It's about 50 thousandths of an inch. [Brad] Is that 1 millimeter? [Josh] I think that's about 1 1/2.
[Brad] Yeah so there's not a whole lot of it. But this stores enough energy to get this
thing to go all the way to the ceiling and hang up there for a good number of
minutes and then gently float back down. The best times in here so far this weekend
been about 26 or 27 minutes and we think that much more is possible.
I don't know if the weather will support it. because the conditions outside do affect
in here but you know I can't have air conditioning or anything these are even
if you... well I'll give you a demonstration so the plane sitting right
here and I go and you see what just happened. So let's talk about the props...
I mean I think probably, and maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, but part of the
game-changer at some point in time someone said hey how about a variable
pitch prop and let's see if we can make this happen.
So variable pitch has been around since I think the early 1930s on full scale. [Brad] Oh really?
Yes, it was originally based on similar restrictions basically your efficiency range so low
pitch just gives you a stronger climb high pitch gives you better efficiency
and cruise, well better efficiency period.
These inner planes will climb even on the tiny rubber motor they'll climb over
200 feet up. They will literally climb that
high and still have enough energy to not run out of turns on the way down. [Brad] And that would be twice as
high as this building here. [Josh] That's correct. [Brad] Amazing. [Josh] Yeah it's 99 feet
to the girders at the disk up there. So if we climb like that in here we're
just wasting energy so you slow the propeller down; reduce that rate of
energy expenditure and you get up there much more slowly and then you have all
that power left to just cruise along and make it back down. So we've now put a variable pitch
propeller hub in here I don't know if it will show up well on the camera because
this is you can see the blades change angle slightly. So this is for higher
ceilings and we don't need a huge amount of pitch change that does it's a visible
difference in your RPMs when it transitions over. So once we you know
this was kind of the standard for a while this is a fairly an advanced
propeller that I came up with recently my design. [Brad] It's a very nice design!
Thing is we're still back to these balsa wood blades now in the past few years we've
seen several people the first person who really really show a major advantage
from it is Brett Sanborn in the United States and these are carbon fiber
molded propeller blades so we have a still have a balsa spar coming out here
a lot of guys are actually using carbon spars
[Brad] Really? [Josh] And they're molding those themselves as
well but this this carbon outline is self-supporting you see I put a couple
holes in this one yesterday [Brad] And that won't exactly break will it?
[Josh] It'll break. You do not want to break these they are very
difficult to repair. [Brad] Are they more sensitive than the balsa itself? [Josh] No they're stronger than
the balsa but the problem is when they break... with balsa you just hit it with glue and it's fine.
These composite repairs are much bigger issue. And this is for different classes is
also an FAI class called F1R. [Brad] F1R, and that's a smaller version? [Josh] So yeah, basically, frankly I like
them even more than I do F1D because there's only one rule other than
it being a heavier than air free flight indoor model and that's a maximum span
of 35 centimeters which is a little under 14 inches.
Unlimited rubber, no minimum weight. I mean they're they're pretty hardcore.
How long do they fly?
Actually they fly as long as F1Ds actually ultimately
I think they can fly longer. [Brad] Is that because the unlimited rubber?
Yeah, so we're theorizing that they can probably fly like 40 minutes in the high ceiling site.
Okay so speaking of rubber though you actually once said and this
was actually an interview that you had with FliteTest. You said fine rubber...
or finding rubber the good rubber is like a good fine wine.
Remember saying that? [Josh] I do! [Brad] I think we need to put that to the test!
So, to test this fine rubber of Josh's I have one wine glass here we're gonna put his
fine rubber inside and I have my generic box rubber. Some people say it's very very classy!
[Josh] Wait, wait! It's August 2013. [Brad] It's vintage August 29 2013.
[Josh] I don't know. I don't know about that batch. [Brad] Maybe? Let's just pour ourselves a glass, shall we?
Here we go. Oh yeah, that's some good stuff right there. [Josh] I just don't know about that...
Alright, so, we're going to see if you can detect the finest rubber there is.
[Josh] mm-hmm. [Brad] All right Josh want you to close your eyes.
[Josh] Okay. [Brad] I'm gonna mix these glasses around. Alright, here is the first one.
Wait, wait, hold on, hold on. Here's the second glass.
So was the first one or the second? [Josh] The first one.. I don't know where you got
that stuff but you need to take it back. The second one...
definitely, definitely that would be 5/99 right there. [Brad] 5/99, excellent, excellent choice!
So, Josh your wife also competes right? [Josh] Yes she does.
She is actually currently the only woman in the U.S. competing in F1D. I'm gonna get out of the seat.
Come on over hope, hey, welcome to Nighthawk Gliders. [Hope] Hi!
So, what do you think about F1D competition? You having a good time?
Actually, I did. It wasn't that bad for my first international competition, so...
Awesome, and how did you do today? Or how you did yesterday you competed yesterday.
Yeah, I competed yesterday I did a 18 and a 20 which is really good for me. So...
This is like your first international competition so there's other US competitions that you've been involved in?
Yes I've been to a couple of national competitions, AMA nationals and
then I've been to and participated in one team
selection and you know many other local smaller contests.
Awesome! Now, your husband, Josh, says it takes him about 20, 20 or so hours to actually
build one of these so how long for you to build these very delicate flying machines?
Oh probably takes me longer because I build a lot slower.
Thank you, Hope, I really appreciate you stopping by and just saying hi to us
glad to meet you and your husband as well you know this is our first time
here and we've actually enjoyed it immensely so the next event Josh you
guys compete at let us know and we will certainly come by and I'm not saying
someday that we're actually going to be competitors but... [Josh] We will fix that. We will fix that problem!
Until next time, we'll see you guys! Thanks! Take care guys!
Ewww...
Cheers